


Kenshō

by caffeinelemur



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, I call him Zoro-bou-san, I watched too much Ghost Hunters and this happened, Japanese Zoro, Mugiwaras are famous international paranormal investigators, POV Alternating, Priest Zoro from the historical specials, Robin is sensitive and Chopper is an intern that attracts ghosts to his cuteness, does that count as major character death?, except Zoro and Brook are spirits, ghost!Zoro, lots of references to Zen Buddhism, of which I am a part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:16:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3244304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caffeinelemur/pseuds/caffeinelemur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The famous paranormal investigation team, Thousand Sunny GHOST, has found and documented evidence of many hauntings around the globe, as well as aided many people by communicating with their unwanted guests. They are considered the best in their field, despite their leader being a sixteen-year-old hyperactive idiot in a straw hat. So when they get a call from a small temple in Hokkaido, Japan about a mysterious priest that seems to wander the grounds, and the discovery of some very interesting katana found hidden on the premises, they think it's all in a day's work and jump at the call. </p>
<p>Little do they know that said Priest would really like his swords back, and really dislikes strangers invading his temple.</p>
<p>When the team first encounters this strange Priest, he changes their lives in a way no one expects, but a mystery must be solved before another entity lays claim to the temple, one much darker and even more dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kenshō

Strange people kept passing through his temple.

They wore odd clothes and spoke quite strangely. They were disrespectful. Sometimes they brought foreign objects in that flashed like lightning and made strange sounds. Hardly anyone prayed. No one stopped to talk to him.

The temple looked the same as always, which was a comfort, he supposed. He could not seem to leave its confines, though. He wandered within its grounds; which extended from the temple itself to the far edge or the forest behind it. The animals in the forest could see him, though they were not the same creatures that he remembered. But they recognized him at least, and while some were afraid, most were not.

He still preformed what duties he could, cleaning the shrine and the temple, taking care of the forest shrines, and searching desperately for his missing katana.

He missed his sensei. He was usually never far from this temple, but anymore he could not be found.

He missed Kuina the most.

He held no aspirations to meet _her_ anywhere on these grounds.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After a while, he realized that he must have died.

Thus, he was a spirit.

That explained a lot.

And strengthened the hope that he would never be confronted with his friend, because then she would have been stuck like he was. Not that he remembered dying. Yet he must have at some point, as he quite obviously was not alive.

One day, as he was in the process of cleaning the temple, a group of those odd people he watched from a distance entered, speaking in strange tongues and defiling his sanctuary.

He felt his anger become palpable in the air. Apparently, the invaders could feel it as well, because they were looking around in fear and confusion.

He was alone, all alone again. But even if his sensei was not there, he would still do his duties. And these people were disrupting those duties and disregarding the sanctity of the temple itself.

“Get out,” he told them. They either did not hear him or did not understand.

So with a great burst of power, he violently shoved one of them toward the door. “LEAVE!”

After the group had left, terrified, he had meditated to calm himself down. He realized that he needed to protect his temple from the rude invaders. But there was a barrier there, he could barely do a thing to them without using large bursts of energy, something he always used to have in spades, but now seemed a rarity in this regard.

As time wore on, people got stranger and ruder, and more difficult to scare away. He would end up using huge bursts of energy gathered from the very air around him in order to push or shout or hit something loud enough to frighten them away.

But once, a small girl had come in alone, and sat by the doors. She had paid her respects and, somehow, turned and saw him. She had tiny pigtails and huge eyes. She smiled and stated talking to him.

_Someone could see him!_

He had missed interaction more than he would have thought, because he began replying to the small girl. He was always easily taken with children. Kuina had said it was his affinity for animals and things of innocence. He would always disagree, because obviously he was not weak to _anything_ , let alone cute things. Not that he found children or animals cute, because he did not. At all.

The little girl told him her name was Rika. Some of her words were strange, but he understood.

“Why are you here all alone, Priest-san?” She had asked.

“The others left, long ago,” he replied gently.

“But aren’t you lonely?”

“Yes,” he pondered with a small, sad smile. “Perhaps I am.”

Eventually Rika’s mother had come in, and had asked to whom she had been talking.

The woman couldn’t see him. She questioned Rika, who had assured her that she was indeed “talking to Priest-san,” and not to worry because “he’s really nice, but lonely.”

Her mother smiled and said “Is he now,” in a tone that suggested she was only playing along.

After her mother led her out, he never saw little Rika again.

 

While Rika’s singular visit was a nice change, the majority of the temple’s visitors were the rude ones. He came up with more creative and less energy-consuming ways to frighten them off.

He later came across another child in the forest, this one named Apis. Some deviants were chasing her, and he intervened by rattling the stones around them and tripping the boys. They ran off, shouting about how the place was haunted. Apis thanked him, speaking similar odd Japanese as Rika had, but with a strange accent. She said they attacked and bullied her for being a something called a “foreign exchange" student, and for praying to the Shinto _kami_ in the shrines.

He appreciated the interest in the temple and it's grounds, though he was Zen Buddhist himself. They talked for a little while before Apis had to leave. She came back every day until she left Japan for her home country. He had loved having someone to talk to who was so kind and respectful, and missed the girl when she left.

He had returned to antagonizing the other visitors to the temple for the following week with a fierceness double to that of his original outbreaks. The temple caretakers, who really did little as the temple was always in perfect condition due to his ghostly ministrations, were worried at their resident spirit’s sudden ferocity, and left. When the new caretakers moved in, the hauntings returned to their normal irritated, but ultimately nonviolent, state.

The new caretakers he had no problem with, as they were quite respectful. They were a family of two, and the girl was a swordswoman. Anyone who valued swordsmanship was a decent and respectable person to him. The man, Smoker-san, was a retired Marine captain and was now chief of the police. Tashigi-san, who he watched grow into a respectable and strong young woman, worked under Smoker-san as a police lieutenant. She reminded him fiercely of Kuina, not only in looks but personality as well, and he wasn’t sure how to think about her originally. At this point he was fond of the little family. He enjoyed trying to annoy Smoker-san by taking his cigars randomly and hiding them in strange places. When Tashigi-san was little, she used to wake up from nightmares to a mysteriously appearing glass of water beside her and a warm, comforting feeling that consoled her enough to put her back to sleep. Now that she was an adult, he would come up behind her and tug on her hair, and when she spun around to see who did it, he would move something loudly in another room, and she would curse at him as he laughed.

As time wore on, the two tended to talk to him as if they could see him. He appreciated the gesture, but he would really rather people actually use his real name and stop calling him ‘Priest-san’. He’d been alone so long now, with no one who actually knew him from before he died, that sometimes he feared he would start forgetting his own identity.

Obviously he was concerned about being a trapped spirit, but he had long ago learned to let things roll off his back and thus took that troublesome discovery and treated it the same as he had most everything else: he accepted it and moved on. Yes, perhaps that made him a substandard Buddhist, not caring much for his as-of-yet unenlightened state, how he may not move on or ever truly reach _satori_ , and how the natural balance seemed to be disrupted, but nature itself allowed him to live like this for so long, he told himself, surely this was allowed in the grand scheme of things, surely he still had a chance. He was more concerned about how long it would take before he lost all the things that made him himself. He still couldn’t find his katana, his only connection to Kuina, and he was afraid to lose what was left of his self as well. Thinking too much on this made him crave a drink.

He really missed being able to drink sake.

He was such a shoddy priest. Someone should depose him or something. 

**Author's Note:**

> Definitions of terms, followed by author's note:
> 
> Kenshō- (見性) a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature, essence". Kenshō is an initial insight or awakening, not full Buddhahood. It is to be followed by further training to deepen this insight, and learn to express it in daily life. The term kenshō is often used interchangeably with satori, which is derived from the verb satoru, and means "comprehension; understanding".
> 
> Satori-(悟り) - lit. "understanding". Japanese term for Buddhist enlightenment.
> 
> Kami-(神)- the spirits or phenomena that are worshiped in the religion of Shinto. They are elements in nature, animals, creationary forces in the universe, as well as spirits of the revered deceased. Many Kami are considered the ancient ancestors of entire clans, and some ancestors became Kami upon their death if they were able to embody the values and virtues of Kami in life. Traditionally, great or charismatic leaders like the Emperor could be kami.
> 
> Zen (禅) Buddhism- the Japanese variant of Chán, a school of Mahayana Buddhism which strongly emphasizes concentration/meditation. This gives insight into ones true nature, or the emptiness of inherent existence, which opens the way to a liberated way of living. Zen fitted the way of life of the samurai: confronting death without fear, and acting in a spontaneous and intuitive way. The primary goal of Rinzai Zen is kensho, seeing one's true nature, and mujodo no taigen, expression of this insight in daily life. Seeing one's true nature means seeing that there is no essential 'I' or 'self', that our true nature is empty. Expression in daily life means that this is not only a contemplative insight, but that our lives are expressions of this selfless existence. Zen emphasizes zazen: meditation as the means to awakening. There are various methods of meditation. In Buddhism two main approaches are used, vipassana (awareness training) and samatha (concentration of the mind). Zen Buddhism emphasizes samatha. The Japanese word 'Zen' is derived from the Chinese word 'Chán', which is derived from dhyana, concentration. The Japanese word 'zazen' means 'sitting meditation'. But Zen meditation ideally is not only concentration, but also awareness: being aware of the continuing changes in our consciousness, of all our sensations and our automatic reactions.  
> _______________________________________________________________  
> Ok, after all those serious and deep definitions and whatnot, here's the actual author's note.
> 
> I got this idea after watching too many episodes of Ghost Hunters International late at night and then going on Tumblr and being assaulted by One Piece gifs. It was originally two different fics that I later combined due to similar content and to bolster the stories. If anyone has any questions or comments, or want to keep up with updates or what's going on, feel free to visit or follow my Tumblr, under the same url as here. The inclusion of Zen Buddhism was more of a personal link rather than anything noticed in canon, as I am in fact a Zen Buddhist. But I felt it fit Zoro rather well to a point, so I went with it. Next chapter you'll get to meet Tashigi and Smoker, as well as the rest of the Mugiwaras. I am in college, so this will be updated but I'm not exactly sure when due to classes and stress, so apologies in advance. I'll do my best.


End file.
